Recently on the internet I stumbled upon pictures of a sponge cake that was coloured light green. My first thought was that there was probably green food color in action, but then I noticed the word “pandan” next to all these photos. I had no idea what this could possibly be so of course I was curious, and this is how I learnt all about cooking with pandan leaves.

The leaves themselves are not eaten, but are used in different ways to impart aroma to foods:

you can add the leaves while cooking and then remove them before serving (similar to what you do with bay leaves)

you can make little packages – wrap small pieces of food in the leaves and either steam or deep fry them

you can prepare a liquid extract of the leaves and add this to the dish

Less than one week after my internet findings, I went shopping at my local Asia Shop and what did I find smiling at me from the shelves for 1,50 Euros? That’s right, a package of fresh pandan leaves. I bought them on the spot!

Once I got home I looked for recipes on the internet again, and found a recipe for pieces of chicken wrapped in pandan leaves – so I decided to try this with fresh tofu in place of the chicken. (Of course I also wanted to try out making the extract, so I put 6 leaves aside for a later experiment.)

For the wrapped tofu I cut 2 blocks of fresh tofu into cubes, then drained out the liquid by placing the tofu cubes between paper towels for a few minutes. I then fried the cubes on all sides, and finally added some soy sauce to the pan while it was still hot in order to flavour the cubes.

Now for wrapping. With the first cube I tried to follow a wrapping technique I found in an online video, where you have to weave the leaves around the tofu cube. Only after attempting the first cube did I read that I should have soaked the leaves in cold water for 1 hour beforehand in order to make the wrapping easier, but at this point I was already too hungry (and also too curious about the flavour!) to wait another full hour. Not only that, but you actually need to use up a lot of the pandan leaves with this weaving technique (1 leaf for one cube). In the end I just rolled the rest of the tofu cubes in shorter cut pieces of the leaves, and held them together with toothpicks. Even without the soaking time the wrapping actually worked quite well.

After 10 minutes in the steamer I decided that this should be sufficient cooking time, because the tofu itself was already cooked enough before, so I declared the small packages ready to be served.

So, now I want to be completely honest: the aroma of the pandan leaves did not really find its way into the tofu. Instead, the main outcome was an intense, delicious smell of basmati rice in the rest of our apartment. The tofu itself had (if I was not completely imagining it) only a very very slightly noticeable flavour.

But, the little packages certainly looked really nice, and it was a lot of fun to try out something new. Later on my husband got to try some of the packages for dinner (this time I steamed them for a bit longer), but his opinion was pretty much the same as mine: that the smell is incredible, but the taste is not really there.

Now for the extract. Using my stick-blender I made a paste out of the 6 leaves that I’d kept aside together with 3-4 T of water (the recipe probably also requires a fresh t-shirt, unless you are really careful. It’s really splashy!)
The 6 leaves yielded about a palm-full of paste, and from this paste, using a sieve and a teaspoon, I was able to squeeze out about 30 ml of liquid. I transferred this to a small glass and put it in the fridge.

After about 2 hours the liquid had split into a dark green part on the bottom and a lighter yellowish liquid on top, as you can see on the photo with the glass.
I left the small glass in the fridge overnight, and the following day the green part (the actual extract) had compacted to about half the height of the day before.

I discarded the upper yellow part, and then I cooked about 1 cup of basmati rice, adding the green liquid to the cooking water. Pandan extract can supposedly be used to make normal rice taste like basmati, but I didn’t have any plain rice at home – so I thought, if I add the pandan extract to high quality basmati rice, maybe I will get the most basmatiest rice ever?
And?
Well. The rice turned a very pleasant light green color, but it tasted the same way as always – like good basmati rice, nothing more. But, once again, the whole apartment had this wonderful smell of basmati.

Conclusion: A culinary failure, but an olfactory success.

The taste of the pandan leaves did not really leave a deep impression, but it’s possible that I did something wrong, for instance:

wrapping tofu instead of chicken pieces …

or using high quality basmati rice …

or maybe I did not use enough extract ?

or maybe the 1 hour of soaking the leaves is not only to make them tender for wrapping, but also so that they release more flavour when steaming them ?

So, if you like the small of basmati, then you should jump at the chance to buy pandan leaves if you see them in a shop, so as not to miss the smelling experience!
And, knowing me, I probably will not give up yet, and on my next visit to the Asia Shop check if there are by chance any pandan leaves in stock.
Maybe I will try out something sweet next time? Pandan leaves supposedly go very well with coconut milk … let’s see! 😉